The present embodiments relate to control in medical imaging. In particular, a user interface is provided for control of medical imaging.
Medical imagers include a large number of controls. In ultrasound, gain, frequency, line density, persistence, smoothing, power, gray levels, speckle reduction, edge enhancement, and dynamic range are a few examples of the many parameters that may be controlled. The large number of controls available to the user may slow exam times and introduce complication. Changing a value for one control may result in a need to change the value for a different control. Given the large number of controls, some of which are dependent on each other and some of which are not, configuring the imager may result in frustration. The iterative adjustment of different controls may lead to an undesired image where determining which controls to adjust for a more desired image is not intuitive.
User controls in an ultrasound system give users the flexibility to change the detail resolution, contrast resolution, temporal resolution, penetration, or aesthetics of the image. Unfortunately, current user interfaces are not simple and intuitive for users to choose proper combination of system settings, resulting in poor image quality. Previous attempts to solve this problem have typically involved user control placement with selection ranges in numbers on a control panel and/or touch panel. Automation may control some parameters, but may not provide comprehensive settings and may not provide settings desired by a given user.